But Abel hardly seems to notice. He’s still rocked by her suggestion. “You would leave the decision entirely up to me?”
“Yes, exactly.” Noemi’s heart sinks as she takes in Abel’s confusion. It’s like he can’t wrap his super-genius mind around something as simple as making his own choices. “I guess that’s one gift Mansfield never wanted to give you—the chance to determine your own fate.”
“You’re too quick to blame him.” Abel’s response comes so readily that she thinks it must be his programming reasserting itself. But the doubt in his eyes tells her he wonders about his own answer. “You were taught that he was wicked, evil, merely for inventing mechs—”
“Don’t you understand, Abel? Do you still not get it?” Noemi hopes he’ll hear this one basic truth, the one that has changed her plans and her heart. “We were taught that Mansfield was evil because he made soulless machines in the shape of men. But he did something worse than that to you, so much worse.” Her voice catches in her throat. “Burton Mansfield’s greatest sin was creating a soul and imprisoning it in a machine.”
Abel says nothing. No doubt he disagrees. But he seems to understand her at last.
After a long moment, he looks away. Noemi can’t meet his eyes again either. Together they’ve crossed a threshold, and neither of them knows what may lie beyond it.
“Sleep,” she says gently. “You have to be exhausted.”
“As do you. You must prioritize your own health and well-being.”
It’s a plea, not an invitation, but Noemi doesn’t care. She lies down on the other half of the bed, atop the silk coverlet. Abel hesitates, obviously wondering what else she might do; when she simply lies there, he closes his eyes, passing instantly into sleep.
Noemi shifts herself closer, so her head rests on his shoulder. She still needs to keep him warm.
And for the first time since Esther’s death—or maybe in far longer—Noemi no longer feels alone.
26
WITHIN ANOTHER EIGHT HOURS, ABEL HAS RESTORED all primary functions. Some of his organic structures will continue to heal further, but he has full mobility and no pain.
He should be happy, an emotion he has discovered lies well within his parameters of feeling. Noemi saved him from death by freezing and has decided to spare him. She acknowledged him as an equal. And she did something no human ever does for a mech: She set him free.
But Abel was never designed for freedom.
He has never dreamed about it. Never even wanted it. Mechs are made for something or someone. Not simply… to be. Even Abel, created from Mansfield’s curiosity and hope, was surely meant to stay by his side always.
But when he says as much to Noemi, she disagrees.
“Wait a minute,” she says the next afternoon, as they walk together down to the crew mess to grab a pouch of emergency rations before getting back to work. “After this you can go anywhere in the galaxy—do absolutely anything—and you’re just returning to Burton Mansfield? I don’t understand why you think Mansfield’s so great after what he did to you.”
“Did to me? Mansfield did everything for me.”
“He put your soul inside a machine—”
“No. He created my soul. He made it possible. He gave that to me.” Abel finds himself smiling. “He couldn’t have known I’d reach this point, but he must have at least hoped for that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have created the capacity.”
After a long moment, Noemi folds her arms in grudging agreement. “I guess.”
“Which makes him less like my creator and more like a parent.” Father, he thinks. Mansfield must’ve known what he was doing when he urged Abel to call him by that name. “Children don’t abandon their parents, do they?”
“Not usually. But they don’t stay with their parents their whole lives either. In the end, you’re supposed to choose a life of your own.”
“In the end,” Abel says. “I’m not there yet.” After thirty years stranded in space, plus several days believing his destruction was imminent, it feels incredible to be able to say such a thing and know it to be true.
However, talking about “the end” has reminded Abel that Burton Mansfield is an elderly man.
After Mansfield dies, then what?
Mechs don’t age much in the visible sense. But even mechs die. Both organic and mechanical systems break down, given enough time. Absent damage, a mech can expect to live about two hundred years before grinding to a halt.
If Abel lives another one hundred and fifty years, he will live the vast majority of those without Burton Mansfield. All the programming within him—what use will it serve then? Only one: It will ensure that Abel remains every bit as lonely as he did in that pod bay.
Abel dislikes this conclusion not only because it predicts his future unhappiness, but also because, if he’s been designed to suffer so much for so long, Noemi is right. Mansfield has made a terrible mistake.
He won’t blame Mansfield. Not yet. But he sees the very real possibility of Mansfield’s error.
I have changed, he thinks. I am changing.
“Are you okay?” Her smile wavers. “You looked so strange for a second.”
“I’m much better,” Abel says. In truth he still feels odd—as if he is having trouble concentrating—but no doubt that’s a sign of the damage still repairing within. “We should get to work.”
“I know. We only have—how many days is it now?”
Until the Masada Run, she means. “Nine days.”
Noemi blanches. “I thought we had a couple more days—”
“We’re much farther from Kismet here, beyond the Blind Gate. More time will have elapsed on your homeworld. The Einsteinian calculations are complex.” Once Abel would’ve added that no human brain could expect to handle such complicated work, but he’s learned better. “We still have time.”
She shakes her head as she drops to her knees to reopen one of the lower panels. “Not enough.”
Abel feels the urgency driving her on as fiercely as if it were his world he needed to save and not hers. Assuming there’s a world he could truly call his own.
They get back to work in the small, shining, cube-shaped engine room of the Daedalus. Throughout the rest of the ship, curved lines dominate. Beauty and symmetry guide the placement of every panel, every chair. The engine room, however, is as gray, basic, and joyless as it is possible for a room to be, outside of prison facilities. It is a place for installation and repair, nothing more. Yet Abel finds himself liking the room, because here he and Noemi work together as partners. They are no longer adversaries, or human and mech; they are equals. Nobody has ever accepted him that way before, and Abel finds the experience… almost intoxicating.